Report on L.A.’s problems has its own: Joe Mathews

When your city’s civic leaders issue a big report called “A Time for Truth,” it’s natural to wonder what took them so long.

The city of Los Angeles — where examples of the weakness of civic life are outnumbered only by examples of elite hand-wringing over the weakness of civic life — recently saw the release of just such a report, by a committee of 12 worthies from the political, business, labor and philanthropic worlds. Its central point: L.A. is too apathetic about planning for the future.

Such reports aren’t new in California. But what’s interesting about “A Time for Truth” is that it says more (sometimes unintentionally) about L.A. and the state than previous exercises. Its most trenchant observations involve the failure of Los Angeles-area governments to collaborate effectively. The neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could work together but instead compete against each other. The cities of L.A., Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica maintain separate efforts to attract international tourists even though “it would take a discerning tourist from China to spot the difference in sand while walking the sidewalk between Santa Monica and Venice.”

But beyond such nuggets, “A Time for Truth” speaks loudest because of what is authors have left out. Indeed, the report’s own history is as telling as anything in it. In the heat of last year’s mayoral election, L.A.’s wise men declared the city’s problems needed longer-term consideration. So L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson asked former U.S. Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to put together a commission to take a long-term look. The commission issued its report months after the elections were safely over. In L.A., an election is never a “Time for Truth.”

The resulting document treats L.A. as if its destiny were likely to be determined by city government and budgeting, a weird stance in a city that has prospered throughout its history more in spite of than because of thoughtful local governance.

The obsession of “A Time for Truth” with the city budget is hard to understand given that the $8 billion annual budget is just 1 percent of the Los Angeles metropolitan area annual GDP of $800 billion.

The report also omits crucial context: City government in Los Angeles is destined to be dysfunctional because Los Angeles has the bad fortune to be located in California, where our famously centralized governing system limits the ability of local officials to raise revenues and make long-term decisions.

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“A Time for Truth” was supposed to “define the problem” for L.A. (A follow-up report will offer solutions.) But “A Time for Truth” misses real problems. The biggest is that L.A. — because of an aging population and declines in immigration and birth rate — is losing the diversity advantage it once had over other major cities. Yet the report states, mistakenly, that our ethnic diversity is “unmatched.” In fact, census figures show Houston and New York City are more diverse.

The most grating thing about the report is that it portrays Angelenos — a struggling, scrambling bunch — as contentedly waiting around to be saved from our decline.

“A Time for Truth” sticks in the knife with a literary reference: “Like the hapless Mr. Micawber in Dickens’ David Copperfield, our wishful response to continued economic decline and impending fiscal crisis has become a habitual: ‘Something, my dear Copperfield, will turn up.’”

Such a reading of Charles Dickens is terribly unfair to Micawber — and Angelenos. Micawber was not hapless. He struggled to cope with the injustices visited upon him by London’s elite, including being sent to debtors’ prison. But he persevered and later immigrated to Australia. There he became a successful businessman and respected city official.